bobquasit: (Default)
bobquasit ([personal profile] bobquasit) wrote2005-12-19 12:02 am

Late Night Vigil

I spoke too soon.

Half an hour after my 10:18 PM entry, Sebastian's temperature was back up to 104.9° (yes, I just figured out how to make a degree symbol in HTML). I called the doctor, was referred to the nurse triage line, and after a few minutes on hold I was speaking to a nurse. As a result of that call we woke him up and gave him children's Motrin. He fussed, but took it and was back to sleep within moments. Now I have to stay up for an hour to take his temperature at midnight, and then call the nurse back.

His hands and feet are like ice, even though his head and torso are burning up. The nurse had me do a nail-bed press test to make sure that he wasn't losing circulation. Which he's not, fortunately.

Since I'm up anyway, I might as well catch up on my posting. The alternative would be Diablo, and I'm already nervous enough.

This is a recap of the weekend, so it's going to be longish. And I'll put in five or six photos. They've been resampled to a smaller size, but I'll still place it all behind a cut for low-bandwidth people.

I forgot to say that we picked up the Christmas tree from the tree farm last week. No one commented on that entry (which surprised me, as I thought it was rather poetic and moving - but maybe only for me), but if anyone was wondering, here's a picture of Sebastian and the farm, with Teri in the distance. When he ran away, it was over the left side of the hill in the distance, past the big tree in the center-left, and all the way to the trees - the tops of the trees that are visible in the distance, of course.

This time he was good and didn't run.



He had two Christmas cookies and more warm apple cider as a reward.

Skipping a week ahead to yesterday (Saturday, December 18th), we went to the La Salette shrine of lights. I'd never been there before, so I'll make a few observations.

1. It's a bit creepy. I'm sorry, but given the incredibly evil actions of so much of the Catholic Church lately, I can't help but be disturbed by all the traditional Catholic iconography and symbolism. Creepy, creepy, creepy.

2. It was a bitch to get to. The signs on the streets weren't very clear, and one was upside-down; for a minute we thought we were going in the wrong direction, which gave us a scare. Traffic was pretty bad.

I'm sorry to say that Sebastian was pretty naughty. He ran away several times, and didn't listen. One time when he ran away I went after him, and we went through a little door beneath a lighted angel into a replica of a tomb. That was REALLY creepy - there was a statue of "dead" Jesus in a glassed-in sepulcher, and on shelf opposite him were a bunch of candles in glass jars. One had the words "FORGIVE ME" scrawled on it, and it was just creepy and disturbing.

Eventually Sebastian ran away and didn't listen too many times, so we had to cut the evening short. As a punishment, he lost his TV privileges for three days. I think that will reduce his overstimulation and calm him down a little.

None of the photos came out well, but there are images at the website above if you're desperate.

Sunday.

Our plan was to go to Edaville Railroad for the Holiday Festival of Lights. My parents and my brother and his family would meet us there.

On the way, I was amazed to see an unusual phenomenon: I'm not sure what the official term is, but I'm calling it a "sunbow". The sun was surrounded by a circular rainbow effect, with two areas of almost sunlike brightness on the arc to the left and right. Here's a photo:



It lasted for more than an hour, until sundown, and we saw it all the way on our trip. Amazing.

Sebastian saw the sunbow, but then slept for much of the trip. Here he is holding his newest toy, baby Rudolph.



He woke up pretty easily when we got to Edaville, and to my utter astonishment, everyone arrived within five minutes.

The sun was still up when we got there (it was around 4 PM); here's what it looked like:



We walked around and it was wonderful. I used to go to Edaville as a little boy, and it was almost as good as I remembered.

At one point I saw a beautiful pink streak in the sky, a jet contrail which had turned pink the in setting sunlight, and I couldn't resist taking a picture:



We went on a few rides, and then took the holiday train. It was wonderful, but my camera is terrible at taking pictures while moving, and they're all pretty blurry. I got slightly better results with the video mode, but they're not worth posting.

During the train ride Sebastian started asking if we could go home right after the train stopped. I was surprised - he'd been asking to go on more rides earlier - but he started fussing a lot, so finally we agreed. It was getting pretty cold, anyway.

We took him home, and the rest you may have already read; Sebastian got as sick as a dog. And in fact, it's time for me to go and take his temperature.